by LepcisMagna 
I’ll give it one thing: after playing for a while and switching to the old graphics, I legitimately thought “it can’t have looked this bad, can it?” In fact, I was so convinced that they had downgraded the graphics of the classic version that I booted up my old copy of Halo 2 to check. But nope – my mind must have just smoothed over the old versions, perhaps because I was less familiar with Halo 2 than I was with CE.
Continue reading “Halo 2 (Remastered)”by LepcisMagna 
Factorio is what happens when somebody like Zachtronics gets their hands on Terraria/Minecraft (though as far as I know the developers have nothing to do with any of those games). Where Minecraft is a medieval-ish fantasy sandbox, Factorio is a game about automation and logistics. It’s a game about crafting, but there’s an achievement for beating the game while crafting fewer than 111 items yourself. It’s also incredibly long – I’ve played for 9 hours, and I’ve apparently only really finished the Phase 2 gameplay (automating your basic science production), though an hour or two of that was getting the right mod list.
It’s hard for me to get addicted to games in the same vein as Minecraft, and I was definitely burning out towards the end of my 9 hours. Still, there are a lot of things to like about Factorio – for example, if you want to craft something complicated, you can just click on it in your craft screen and all the component bits will be crafted automatically in your inventory without you having to worry about it – which is very very nice. I definitely see myself beating it eventually. Tier One for now.
EDIT: It’s now Monday and I’ve played another 16 hours since posting this on Saturday. As it turns out, a game that you can waste a lot of time with is quite attractive when you’re stuck at home.
by LepcisMagna 
It’s hard to argue with Streets of Rogue. It’s a rogue-lite that reminds me a lot of Heat Signature (though with quite a bit more “stuff” to it) and a little bit of Golden Krone Hotel. The soundtrack is good, there’s a good sampling of fun mechanical interactions, and the various unlockables will mean you have quite a bit of work to do to get everything (whether that’s a good thing or not is my only real complaint). I was going to write more, but that about covers it.
by LepcisMagna 
It’s not often that I play a game that hooks me so completely, nor one that I buy (pre-order, even, against my usual policy) after playing the demo. Not for Broadcast, though, did both (the only other I can think of, had I known about it before it came out, would be The Stanley Parable). You play some schmuck who ended up in a television broadcast center after the previous editor decides to fly off somewhere and get smashed.
Continue reading “Not for Broadcast”by LepcisMagna 
It’s been a while since I’ve put anything into Tier Three, and I’m sad I have to do it to this game.
Continue reading “BELOW”by LepcisMagna 
I find myself unsure. On the one hand, this is a fun little RPG with an interesting twist: you don’t directly control your character, only their equipment. You venture forward and defeat enemies, equipping and unequipping things as you go to give yourself the greatest advantage or solve puzzles. On the other hand, the game has taken influence from idle games. On the third hand, it has a built in scripting language so you can automate yourself away. Whether that’s a positive or negative, I’m not sure.
Oh also, it’s entirely made out of ASCII art, but you probably figured that one out.
Continue reading “Stone Story RPG”by LepcisMagna 
It’s Phoenix Wright, but Picross instead of crazy legal procedure. That’s it. Well, except for your hovering robot companion and a guy getting murdered by a giant shoe.
Continue reading “Murder by Numbers”by LepcisMagna 
This game is Continuity, but on a bigger budget. If you’re wondering what Continuity is and why I haven’t linked it, that’s because it’s a flash game. A flash game connected to a mostly dead website (at least, at the time of this writing it’s mostly dead), subject to the slow rot of internet culture. Which is sad, because it was one of the cleverer games I’d played during the adolescence of the internet. I had plenty of time to play flash games, being both at an age where I still had recess and being a Mac gamer (while Power Pete and Lode Runner are fantastic games, you do eventually get bored).
Continue reading “The Pedestrian”by LepcisMagna 
I do want to like this game. It has a remarkable number of interesting features – from medieval battles to trading to politics. Unfortunately, getting to the good bits usually requires waiting through an hour and a half of the boring bits.
Continue reading “Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord”by LepcisMagna 
The remaster of Halo: Combat Evolved leaves much to be desired. Scratch that – it’s just bad. While the port itself is technically well-done, both the graphical and (more frustratingly) the sound design language have been mangled almost beyond recognition.
Continue reading “Halo: Combat Evolved (Remastered)”